DALLAS, February 12, 2013 — In 1938, the practice of homeschooling was outlawed in Germany by Adolf Hitler and the infamous Third Reich. It was a rough period in German history, as thousands of young people were being pried from their parents’ direction and authority and drafted into the Hitler Youth program, where they were supposed to be trained as Aryan supermen (and women). In a few short years, vast numbers of these youth would be bleeding out on the battlefields of Europe, on the wrong side of the war for the soul of the world.

Sadly for freedom and for many families, Germany has never lifted this archaic and totalitarian ban on homeschooling. On the contrary, the German government seems to have stepped up its opposition to homeschooling over the past decade, forcing several families to flee, and others to enroll their children in state-approved schools against their will. The German Supreme Court has stated that the purpose of the homeschooling ban is to, “counteract the development of religious and philosophically motivated parallel societies.” It sounds like they aren’t really big on religious or philosophical diversity over there.

Some notable victims of this small-minded and grasping totalitarianism are Uwe and Hannelore Romeike and their five children. Uwe and his wife are music teachers and evangelical Christians who for years have been unsuccessfully seeking the right to homeschool their children. The Romeikes withdrew their children from German public schools in 2006, after becoming concerned that the educational material employed by the school was undermining the tenets of their Christian faith, and that the school was not providing their children with an ideal learning environment. “I don’t expect the school to teach about the Bible,” Mr. Romeike said, but “part of education should be character-building.”

After accruing the equivalent of around $10,000 in fines, and facing police visits to their home and the forcible removal of their children from the home, the Romeikes fled Germany in 2008 to seek asylum in the land of the free and the home of the brave. Their case was taken up by the Homeschool Legal Defense Association (HSLDA), which helped the Romeikes in 2010 to become the first family ever granted asylum in the US for the protection of their homeschooling rights.

The HSLDA explains, “The U.S. law of asylum allows a refugee to stay in the United States permanently if he can show that he is being persecuted for one of several specific reasons. Among these are persecution for religious reasons and persecution of a ‘particular social group.’ ”

On January 26, 2010, Memphis federal immigration judge Lawrence Burman granted the Romeikes political asylum, ruling they had a reasonable fear of persecution for their beliefs if they returned to their homeland. Judge Burman also denounced the German policy heatedly. In a statement, he called it, “utterly repellent to everything we believe as Americans.”

HSLDA’s Mike Donnelley called the ruling, “an extraordinary recognition of the fundamental importance of the right of parents to raise their children according to the dictates of individual conscience.”

....The Romeikes were able to continue quietly homeschooling their children in a small Tennessee town. For a time.

Sadly, their period of respite was not to last. The Romeikes’ case is now before the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, with the US government seeking to revoke their asylum and force them to return to Germany. And the details of Attorney-General Holder’s arguments in the brief for Romeike v. Holder are sinister, to say the least.

According to Holder, parents have no fundamental right to home-educate their children.

HSLDA founder Mike Farris warns,

“[Holder’s office] argued that there was no violation of anyone’s protected rights in a law that entirely bans homeschooling. There would only be a problem if Germany banned homeschooling for some but permitted it for others. "

Seems to me they have a lot of options. I think we should have a general rule not to grant asylum to citizens from countries if the policy or conditions they complain of in their home country are not present in neighboring countries with open borders for immigration and residence purposes and comparable standards of living.

Maybe, they think we have more freedoms. I think we do because our sense of freedom is more expansive than a Europeans. The EU sucks all around being run by unelected bureaucrats though.

The USA can't grant asylum to every European that thinks they would rather live here than there.

Well, we aren't discussing "every European." This is a Nazi implemented law this family is fleeing.
I don't know what the rules for asylum are, but I defend this on natural law—not some man-made rule.
The Obama regime, hates homeschoolers and has no problem with a Nazi law as an oppression. That's what their actions show.

Well, we aren't discussing "every European." This is a Nazi implemented law this family is fleeing.
I don't know what the rules for asylum are, but I defend this on natural law—not some man-made rule.

Is that really your basis for allowing asylum based on availability of homeschooling? If it had been implemented before or after the Nazis, it would be ok? Certainly, the Germans have had the chance to revise the law since the 1940s. How about all the other countries that don't allow homeschooling? The Nazis didn't implement it those places. Tying the asylum of this family to the Nazis is quite ridiculous.

Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that "Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution." The United Nations 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and the 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees guides national legislation concerning political asylum. Under these agreements, a refugee (or for cases where repressing base means has been applied directly or environmentally to the defoulé refugee) is a person who is outside their own country's territory (or place of habitual residence if stateless) owing to fear of persecution on protected grounds. Protected grounds include race, nationality, religion, political opinions and membership and/or participation in any particular social group or social activities. Rendering true victims of persecution to their persecutor is a particularly odious violation of a principle called non-refoulement, part of the customary and trucial Law of Nations.

United States

The United States honors the right of asylum of individuals as specified by international and federal law. A specified number of legally defined refugees,
As noted in the article specifically about asylum and refugees in the United States, since World War II, more refugees have found homes in the U.S. than any other nation and more than two million refugees have arrived in the U.S. since 1980. During much of the 1990s, the United States accepted over 100,000 refugees per year, though this figure has recently decreased to around 50,000 per year in the first decade of the 21st century, due to greater security concerns. As for asylum seekers, the latest statistics show that 86,400 persons sought sanctuary in the United States in 2001.[9] Prior to the September 11 attacks individual asylum applicants were evaluated in private proceedings at the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Services (INS).

Despite this generosity, there are serious problems with the U.S. asylum and refugee determination processes. A recent empirical analysis by three legal scholars described the U.S. asylum process as a game of refugee roulette; that is to say that the outcome of asylum determinations depends in large part on the identity of the particular adjudicator to whom an application is randomly assigned, rather than on the merits of the case.

Rights of asylum (sometimes called political asylum, from the Greek: ἄσυλον[1]) is an ancient juridical notion in the western tradition.

I realize, this is wikipedia, but I'm using it as a starting point.Based on this, it appears the Obama Regime's politics is influencing their decision. Obamabots are unable to see it because they tend to not be pro-homeschooling but prefer govt indoctrination camps like we have here. JMO

I'm sure if they were Hispanic and had fled Guatemala to home school their nice children in Christian principles, the entire national media would be camped out at their house covering it. The Catholic Church would have bishops praying endlessly on the curb. The Democrats in Congress would be demanding an immediate amnesty for all 10 million illegals (wait! they do that anyway)

And Obama would say that one of the kids "looks like he could be my son".

So....if non-Americans (Germans, in this case) act in unAmerican ways to their unAmerican citizens, it's our duty to give them asylum?

Seriously?

Not being able to home school is PERSECUTION by their government such that we have a moral duty to give them shelter in our country?

Seriously?

If its for religious reasons then absolutely. We are country, right or wrong, about religious freedom. It's a very, very hard standard to live up to because you with your beliefs have to tolerate a person that would spend their lifetime objecting to you. Germany threw in the towel on that ideal a long time ago because they can't live up to it or even try. That's why the US is the best country in the world.

Well, we aren't discussing "every European." This is a Nazi implemented law this family is fleeing.
I don't know what the rules for asylum are, but I defend this on natural law—not some man-made rule.
The Obama regime, hates homeschoolers and has no problem with a Nazi law as an oppression. That's what their actions show.

In response to my point that this family can escape the homeschooling ban in Germany by freely moving to 20+ neighboring countries that have open borders, you stated that they might "prefer" the United States over those other countries.

This is a routine case handled in the immigration bureaucracy, nobody in the white house or doj ever heard about this case except for the publicity that the homeschool lobby and friendly media has given it recently.

What action has the federal government done or threatened to do that would hinder good faith homeschooling?